Wildlife experts from Disney's Animal Kingdom are currently on island making sure Ko'ko' birds that are to be released on Rota later this week are healthy. According to Dr. Deidre Fontenot, The Walt Disney Company has a long history in conservation, which began nearly a decade ago with the opening of the Animal Kingdom Theme Park in Orlando, Florida.
Since 1991, veterinarians and husbandry specialists from the Animal Kingdom have been coming to Guam to build ties with the local Department of Agriculture's Division of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources' Captive Guam Rail Breeding Program. "The Walt Disney Company has afforded us the opportunity to do field projects. So with such a successful release program as the Ko'ko' has here on Guam, we decided to come over and help out," said Fontenot.
This is the third round of health assessments the Disney team is performing on Guam Rails and over the past week they, along with local wildlife biologists including Caplan Anderson who manages the captive breeding facility in Mangilao, have been performing the wellness exams on both the breeding population and a group of Guam Rails that will be released on Rota this week.
"We will be releasing 46 over the next two months on Rota and the last release we had was in January and if I'm not mistaken that was 49 birds," stated Anderson. "Right now we're conducting censuses up on the two release sites on Rota and we have tracked birds in both locations. So they're very initial and early results, but so far so good."
Dr. Fontenot says that the Ko'ko population in the local captive breeding program is very healthy and thriving. She also notes that Guam's Captive breeding program is a great example of what successful conservation programs should look like.
"Our participation here is a great learning experience for us on how successful programs can be instituted elsewhere. So we learn a lot when we come here and we can take that back to our team and other conservation programs," she stated.
